Yesterday -- October 4, 2023 -- was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Charlton Heston! I meant to finish and post this yesterday, in celebration, but life got in the way. Still, only a slightly belated celebration :-)
Ben-Hur (1959) is the first movie I ever saw Charlton Heston in. My family rented it from the video store one weekend when I was probably ten or eleven, and I absolutely loved it. When we bought our own copy a few years later, I watched it once a year or so. For years, I dreamed of a chance to see it on the big screen, and I was actually able to do that a few years ago! My husband and kids and I got to go see it in the theater, and it was magnificent.
While I have seen Charlton Heston in many other movies over the years, Ben-Hur remains my favorite film of his, and my favorite performance of his. So, today, I am reviewing the film's soundtrack.
This is the most majestic score I have ever heard, and I have many favorite themes which get featured in many different tracks. Miklos Rozsa 100% earned that Oscar, my friends.
I'll begin with the "Prelude" because it's what opens the film, and because it has bits of most of the major themes in it, so if you're only going to listen to one track, this one gives you an excellent taste of the style and overall sound of this soundtrack. And yet it manages to meld so many disparate themes into a cohesive whole -- remarkable achievement, really.
"Friendship" is mostly a lyrical song, but with a masculine sensibility. The title refers to the bond of friendship between the main character, a Jewish noble named Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston), and Messala (Stephen Boyd), a Roman soldier. The destruction of their friendship sets the story in motion, as a beautiful childhood relationship dissolves under the weight of adult loyalties.
"Parade of the Charioteers" is all barely-contained energy and mounting adrenaline. Even if you don't know there's going to be a famous, fantastic chariot race happening next, this music would cue you in that something awesome and exciting is about to take place.
And now for something completely different: the "Love Theme." It's tender, pensive, yearning. An oasis of quiet gentleness among all the spectacle. But at the same time, not remotely boring.
If you want a little more, "The Overture" is also fantastic, and it covers even more of the main themes than "The Prelude." Yes, Ben-Hur is such a colossal movie, it has an overture, and then a prelude. And an intermission. And it deserves them.
Okay, I'll stop here :-) If you like these samplings at all, do yourself a favor and listen to the whole thing on YouTube, starting here. Then if you love it, buy the CDs, the big, long, full score, because it is completely worth it. I do not tire of this music.
(This review originally appeared here at J and J Productions on October 13, 2015.)
When I was (quite) young, cinemas would show movies like these during summer holiday time (with no new blockbusters, they came towards autumn/Christmas). "Everybody's outside bathing or out of town anyway, so let's show films which are really made for the big screen and try to get some seats filled". That's how I saw "Gone With The Wind", "Spartacus", "Lawrence of Arabia", "The Great Escape" – and "Ben Hur". My, was I impressed by Miklos Rozsa's spectacular score! Rozsa had studied classical music (of course), and Swiss composer Arthur Honegger suggested to him to earn a couple of extra francs by also composing movie scores – Honegger had written the score for 1934s "Les Misérables" and convinced Rosza that movie scores could be quite high class. He went to Hollywood, wrote scores for film noir, melodramas and epics, taught at film academies (amongst his pupils were people like John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith...) and made some enemies in Hollywood. His music was influenced by his compatriots Bartok and Kodaly, whereas the studios' musical establishment often preferred more late romantic scores (he called Victor Young's music (Young wrote the score for my fave Western "Shane"...) "Broadway-cum-Rachmaninoff"...!). I close this super long comment (sorry...) which only shows how much I adore this score and I really feel like watching (at least part of) "Ben-Hur" tonight...
ReplyDeleteAndrea, that is so cool that your local theaters would show epics that way! It has only been in the last decade or so that I have lived near any theaters that show older films and classics, and it has been so wonderful to see a few things the way they are meant to be seen, large and fantastic.
DeleteSorry it took me a while to reply to this -- life got very busy for a week or so, but it's settling down again :-) How're you doing?
Rachel, yes, I so miss those local theaters (such an appropriate expression), they all closed down - we had a "Cinema Mile" downtown with one "movie palace" next to another... When they were not showing films that needed big screens, they showed - live - plays or operas... The Met, New York, in Basel, the National Theatre, London, here in my town... I saw Cumberbatch live as Hamlet in one of those cinemas some years ago. Likewise, sorry it took me so long to reply – all a bit chaotic here, I support a smallish church choir in dire need of sopranos (I have a professionally trained operatic voice), we're singing the wonderful "Creation" by Haydn, three concerts in three different churches in the rural parts of the Basel region. Strenuous but worth it.
ReplyDeleteAndrea, wow! And here I feel lucky if I live in a place where I have access to more than one theater. I have two in this city, and it's such a luxury! A "cinema mile" sounds amazing!
DeleteI did get to see that livestreamed version of Cumberbatch as Hamlet in the theater -- twice! I reviewed it here, if you want my fuller thoughts on that. I didn't see it at one of my theaters here, but one about an hour away. It was marvelous -- so good, that I went back to an encore presentation a couple years later!
How lovely that you get to sing in some concerts! I was in an all-woman choir back in college, which was an amazing experience. I haven't had any operatic training, but I do enjoy singing in our church choir nowadays :-) And directing our children's choir! But I miss getting to learn some more difficult pieces once in a while.
I had seen Ben-Hur on video a few times, in my early 20s. When I was visiting my grandparents who lived in the Boston area, my grandmother saw that Ben-Hur was going to be shown at the Wang Theater, and Charlton Heston was going to speak before the movie!
ReplyDeleteIt was epic! I don't really remember his speech, but I was suitably impressed and charmed. (This would have been about 1990 or '91.)
The best part was that he stayed to watch the movie with us in the theater! How fun to cheer during the chariot race with the hero sitting a few rows in front of you!
I'll never forget it. Probably some people went to talk to him after the movie and get an autograph or something, but I never would have been brave enough to do that.
Caitlin, oh, what a dreamy experience! Wow. I would have been so agog. How marvelous that he stayed to watch it!!!
DeleteI am usually not brave about things like getting autographs either. I went to see Jude Law play Hamlet in NYC a decade or so ago, and the person I went with offered we could hang around the stage door afterward to get his autograph and I was like, "What?!? Are you nuts!?? Much too scary!" Lol.